“Master Dandy—before God, I think I’m the only man who knows it. There is time for you to get away—to hide beyond seas—never to come back to this place, where you have been led to do such wrong. Master Dandy!”—he had fallen upon his knees, at the feet of the other man, and was clasping his dress, in the agony of his appeal—“I knew you when you were a bright faced lad, laughing in the sunshine, and with no stain of blood upon you. Master Dandy——” “Stain of blood!” cried Philip, recoiling. “What are you talking of? What madness possesses you?” “No madness, Master Dandy—would to Heaven it might be!” cried the other. “It isn’t for me to see into a gentleman’s heart, or to know what temptations he may have, above such as I am. But the thing is done, and all high Heaven can’t undo it now. Master Dandy—there is yet time to get away, before they find it.” “Will you tell me what you mean?” cried Philip, distractedly. Harry got up from his knees, and came nearer to his master—looking all about him fearfully first, as though afraid there might be listeners, even in that spot. “Listen, Master Dandy,” he whispered. “Last night—restless, and thinking of you—for you haven’t been as kind to me lately as you once were, Master Dandy—I crept out of the house, and went out in the moonlight. I walked a long way, without knowing it—and I came to the wood behind the old mill.” Like an echo, there came to Philip Chater certain words, spoken by a girl who called herself Patience Miller, and who had met him on the night of his arrival at Bamberton. As in a dream, too, while the other man went on speaking, he seemed to see a figure dart out into the highway—a figure that afterwards scraped heavy clay from its boots, in the light of a flickering lamp—a figure which now lay at the bottom of the Thames. “Master Dandy,” went on the agitated voice—“I came, by accident, to where she lay, with blood upon her—dead—in the moonlight. Master Dandy”—he put his hands before his face, and shuddered—“say it isn’t true, Master Dandy—for God’s sake, say it isn’t true!” “What do you mean?” asked Philip, hoarsely, with an awful sweat of fear beginning to break out upon him. “Master Dandy—in the wood behind the mill—Patience Miller—murdered!” With a cry, the lad fell at his feet, and buried his face in the grass. CHAPTER VIII TELLS OF SOMETHING HIDDEN IN THE WOOD Philip Chater was so stunned, in the first shock of the thing, that he did not know what to say, or what to do. Standing, as he did, an absolutely innocent man, he yet had time to recognise that he had taken upon himself the identity of another; and stood answerable, by reason of that, for that other’s sins, in the eyes of the world, at least.